Sirius Building

It re-engaged with the built fabric and pedestrian movement patterns of the city, and human scale through individual terraces and roof gardens.

Glenn Harper

The Sirius Building, built between 1975 and 1980, is a rare and intact example of late Brutalist design as applied to social housing. Sirius was conceived in the wake of the so-called “Green Bans,” a protest movement in Sydney that began in late 1971 in opposition to the commercial redevelopment of The Rocks and Millers Point precincts of the 1970s. Instead of relocating local residents elsewhere, the New South Wales Housing Commission decided to build affordable public housing for them in the same area, with Tao Gofers as project designer. The Sirius Building also represented a shift toward designing large-scale projects that would accommodate a range of family types and sizes. Now threatened with demolition due to changing tastes, there has been a groundswell of resistance, though its future remains uncertain.